Our youngest daughter likes to tell stories about a character that she has created; a horse named Cowboy Bozo. Earlier this year, she told me a new Cowboy Bozo story:
"Once upon a time, Cowboy Bozo went to the beach with a girl. She was riding on his back. He went into the water. All of a sudden, the girl ran away! Then, a little while after, she came back to where Cowboy Bozo was... "... but there he wasn't was."
"There he wasn't was." Was this a mistake? Had my precious, articulate 3.5 year old princess just made A LINGUISTIC ERROR?
I would argue not. Instead of thinking of learning a language like learning math or science, try thinking about it like learning to walk. Just as we go through various developmental stages when learning to walk, so do we move through various developmental stages as we acquire language.
Crawling isn't bad walking; it's just a developmental stage. When a baby rolls over, sits up, pulls themself up, and crawls, we don't try to correct the child for not walking properly. We acknowledge that their new movement is evidence of a new developmental stage– we get a glimpse of the growth and development that is happening inside their little bodies! We should view language acquisition the same way.
When a learner forms an "irregular" verb pattern improperly, or a student overextends the use of one verb into the territory of another (think ser vs. estar if you are a Spanish teacher), this should be viewed as evidence of the developmental stage of language acquisition that the learner is in. It is EXCITING to get a glimpse into what is happening in the learner's mind. And, furthermore, just as the strategy to help a baby move from one developmental stage to the next is time, so is the strategy to move from one developmental stage of language acquisition to the next time... time spent listening to and reading processable input: linguistic input that the learner can understand.
Try it– and I think you'll find that linguistic errors, just like Cowboy Bozo, there they aren't are.
The content of this blog post was originally posted on Instagram in March of 2021. Click here to see the original post, and follow @comprehensibleclassroom for to fill your feed with ideas related to language teaching.
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